In his only extant work, the poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), the Epicurean author Titus Lucretius Carus writes of the soul as inseparable from the corporeal body. This view, although controversial in its opposition to the traditional concept of a discrete and immortal soul, is nevertheless more than just a novelty. The argument made by Lucretius for the soul to be an emergent property of interactions between physical particles is indeed more convincing and well supported now than Lucretius himself would have ever imagined. Lucretius begins his argument by noting that the mind, far from being separate from it has been observed that the affairs of the body are directly influenced by physical forces. He states that “the nature of mind and spirit is corporeal; for when we see the limbs pushed forward, the body awakened from sleep, the whole man guided and directed, and we see that none of these things can be done without touch, and furthermore that there is no touch without the body, Must we not confess that the mind and spirit have a corporeal nature?” (161). This observation is indeed confirmed in everyday life: except for the dubious claims of psychics and mystics, the soul and mind have demonstrated no way of interacting with its surroundings or inflicting its will on the world without some form of bodily interaction. Even in the "immaterial" arts the mouth is necessary for oration, the hands for writing poetry and the limbs for dance. Even the most basic passive perception requires eyes to see, ears to hear, or skin to feel. A soul without these faculties would be completely helpless and therefore the existence of such a soul would be completely purposeless. Such a soul Lucretius late... middle of paper... This statement has been experimentally proven by surgeons and executioners a million times, with the same result: a man deprived of his foot can still live, but a man deprived of his head will inevitably die. “Since even in our body it is seen that there is a fixed rule and ordinance in which the mind and spirit can exist and develop separately, much more must we deny that they can endure and be produced entirely outside the body” (784) ). Indeed we must, since no evidence to the contrary can be found, a mind external to a body has yet to be observed, and the spontaneous infusion of life into that which lies lifeless is a theory of generation which has long been discredited by the hands by Louis Pasteur.Works CitedM. Macmillan (2008) “Phineas Gage – Unraveling the Myth”, The Psychologist (BritishPsychological Society), 21(9): 828-831.Lucretius. "De Rerum Natura".